GBE Frankia-Enriched Metagenomes from the Earliest Diverging Symbiotic Frankia Cluster: They Come in Teams Thanh Van Nguyen1, Daniel Wibberg2, Theoden Vigil-Stenman1,FedeBerckx1, Kai Battenberg3, Kirill N. Demchenko4,5, Jochen Blom6, Maria P. Fernandez7, Takashi Yamanaka8, Alison M. Berry3, Jo¨ rn Kalinowski2, Andreas Brachmann9, and Katharina Pawlowski 1,* 1Department of Ecology, Environment and Plant Sciences, Stockholm University, Sweden 2Center for Biotechnology (CeBiTec), Bielefeld University, Germany 3Department of Plant Sciences, University of California, Davis 4Laboratory of Cellular and Molecular Mechanisms of Plant Development, Komarov Botanical Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, Saint Petersburg, Russia 5Laboratory of Molecular and Cellular Biology, All-Russia Research Institute for Agricultural Microbiology, Saint Petersburg, Russia 6Bioinformatics and Systems Biology, Justus Liebig University, Gießen, Germany 7Ecologie Microbienne, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique UMR 5557, Universite Lyon I, Villeurbanne Cedex, France 8Forest and Forestry Products Research Institute, Ibaraki, Japan 9Biocenter, Ludwig Maximilians University Munich, Planegg-Martinsried, Germany *Corresponding author: E-mail:
[email protected]. Accepted: July 10, 2019 Data deposition: This project has been deposited at EMBL/GenBank/DDBJ under the accession PRJEB19438 - PRJEB19449. Abstract Frankia strains induce the formation of nitrogen-fixing nodules on roots of actinorhizal plants. Phylogenetically, Frankia strains can be grouped in four clusters. The earliest divergent cluster, cluster-2, has a particularly wide host range. The analysis of cluster-2 strains has been hampered by the fact that with two exceptions, they could never be cultured. In this study, 12 Frankia-enriched meta- genomes of Frankia cluster-2 strains or strain assemblages were sequenced based on seven inoculum sources. Sequences obtained via DNA isolated from whole nodules were compared with those of DNA isolated from fractionated preparations enhanced in the Frankia symbiotic structures.